“Ring the bell!”

Samuel Adams said it, and one of Sergeant Munroe’s men ran to the green, seized the bell-rope, and set the meetinghouse bell to clanging, sending the alarm far and wide upon the still night air.

In the farmhouses candles were quickly lighted, and the minute-men, who had agreed to obey a summons at a moment’s warning, came running with musket, bullet-pouch, and powder-horn, to the rendezvous. They formed in line, but, no redcoats appearing, broke ranks and went into Buckman’s tavern.

Silently, without tap of drum, the grenadiers and light infantry under Colonel Francis Smith, at midnight, marched from their quarters to Barton’s Point, together with the marines under Major Pitcairn.

“Where are we going?” Lieutenant Edward Gould of the King’s Own put the question to Captain Lawrie.

“I suppose General Gage and the Lord, and perhaps Colonel Smith, know, but I don’t,” the captain replied, as he stepped into a boat with his company.

It was eleven o’clock when the last boat-load of troops reached Lechmere’s Point,—not landing on solid ground, but amid the last year’s reeds and marshes. The tide was flowing into the creek and eddies, and the mud beneath the feet of the king’s troops was soft and slippery.

“May his satanic majesty take the man who ordered us into this bog,” said a soldier whose feet suddenly went out from under him and sent him sprawling into the slimy oose.

“By holy Saint Patrick, isn’t the water nice and warm!” said one of the marines as he waded into the flowing tide fresh from the sea.

“Gineral Gage intends to teach us how to swim,” said another.

With jokes upon their lips, but inwardly cursing whoever had directed them to march across the marsh, the troops splashed through the water, reached the main road leading to Menotomy, and waited while the commissary distributed their rations. It was past two o’clock before Colonel Smith was ready to move on. Looking at his watch in the moonlight and seeing how late it was, he directed Major Pitcairn to take six companies of the light infantry and hasten on to Lexington.

From the house of Reverend Mr. Clark, Paul Revere, William Dawes, and young Doctor Prescott of Concord, who had been sparking his intended wife in Lexington village, started on their horses up the road towards Concord. From the deep shade of the alders a half dozen men suddenly confronted them.

“Surrender, or I will blow out your brains!” shouts one of the officers.

Revere and Dawes are prisoners; but Doctor Prescott, quick of eye, ear, and motion, is leaping his horse over the stone wall, riding through fields and pastures, along bypaths, his saddle-bags flopping, his horse, young and fresh, bearing him swiftly on over the meadows to the slumbering village, with the news that the redcoats are coming.[57]

“Tell us where we can find those arch traitors to his majesty the king, or you are dead men,” the threat of an officer.

Paul Revere sees the muzzle of the pistol within a foot of his breast, but it does not frighten him.

“Ah, gentlemen, you have missed your aim.”

“What aim?”

“You won’t get what you came for. I left Boston an hour before your troops were ready to cross Charles River. Messengers left before me, and the alarm will soon be fifty miles away. Had I not known it, I would have risked a shot from you before allowing myself to be captured.”

From the belfry of the meetinghouse the bell was sending its peals far and wide over fields and woodlands.

“Do you not hear it? The town is alarmed,” said Revere.

“Rub-a-dub-dub! rub-a-dub-dub! rub-a-dub, rub-a-dub, rub-a-dub-dub!” It was the drummer beating the long roll.

“The minute-men are forming; you are dead men!” said Dawes.

The drumbeat, with the clanging bell, was breaking the stillness of the early morning. The officers put their heads together and whispered a moment.

“Get off your horses,” ordered Captain Parsons of the king’s Tenth Regiment.

Revere and Dawes obeyed.

“We’ll keep this; the other is only fit for the crows to pick,” said one of the officers, cutting the saddle-girth of Dawes’s horse, turning it loose, and mounting Bucephalus. Then all rode away, dashing past the minute-men on Lexington Green.

“The minute-men are forming,—three hundred of them,” reported the officers to Colonel Smith, who was marching up the road.[58]

The bell and the drumbeat, the lights in Buckman’s tavern and the other houses, the minute-men in line by the meetinghouse, had quickened the imagination of the excited Britishers.

“The country is alarmed. It is reported there are five hundred rebels gathered to oppose me. I shall need reinforcements.” Such was the message of Colonel Smith to General Gage.

He directed Major Pitcairn to push on rapidly with six companies of light infantry.

“Jonathan! Jonathan! Get up quick! The redcoats are coming and something must be done!”[59]

Abigail Harrington shouted it, bursting into her son Jonathan’s chamber. He had not heard the bell, nor the commotion in the street. Jonathan was only sixteen years old, but was fifer for the minute-men. In a twinkling he was dressed, and seizing his fife ran to join the company forming in line by the meetinghouse; answering to their names, as clerk Daniel Harrington called the roll.

John Hancock and Samuel Adams hear the drumbeat; Hancock seizes his gun.

“This is no place for you; you must go to a place of safety,” said Reverend Mr. Clark.

“Never will I turn my back to the redcoats,” said Hancock.

“The country will need your counsels. Others must meet the enemy face to face,” was the calm, wise reply of the patriotic minister.

Other friends expostulate; they cross the road and enter a thick wood crowning the hill.

“Stand your ground. If war is to come, let it begin here. Don’t fire till you are fired upon,” said Captain John Parker, walking along the lines of his company.

The sun is just rising. Its level beams glint from the brightly polished gun-barrels and bayonets of the light infantry of King George, as the battalion under Major Pitcairn marches towards Lexington meetinghouse. The trees above them have put forth their tender leaves. The rising sun, the green foliage, the white cross-belts, the shining buckles, the scarlet coats of the soldiers, and the farmers standing in line, firmly grasping their muskets, make up the picture of the morning.

Major Pitcairn, sitting in his saddle, beholds the line of minute-men, rebels in arms against the sovereign, formed in line to dispute his way. What right have they to be standing there? King George is supreme!

“Disperse, you rebels! Lay down your arms and disperse!” he shouts.

Captain John Parker hears it. The men behind him, citizens in their everyday clothes, with powder-horns slung under their right arms, hear it, but stand firm and resolute in their places. They see the Britisher raise his arm; his pistol flashes. Instantly the front platoon of redcoats raise their muskets. A volley rends the air. Not a man has been injured. Another volley, and a half dozen are reeling to the ground. John Munroe, Jonas Parker, and their comrades bring their muskets to a level and pull the triggers. With the beams of the rising sun falling on their faces, they accept the conflict with arbitrary power.

“What a glorious morning is this!” the exclamation of Samuel Adams on yonder hill.

Jonathan Harrington was wounded where the stone now stands, and fell dead at the doorstep of his house